Set
by Summer Leigh Wind
Summary: Alecto had hoped differently, but with a wand just shy of her father's, she understood her fate laid elsewhere. One-Shot.


_**Set**_

* * *

Before you learn to fight, you ought to learn how to hide–especially if your opponent was twice your size. Or, at least, that was what Alecto thought. Pushing her brother into one of the kitchen cabinets, she closed the door even as he began to speak.

"What about y–"

"Sh!" she hissed as she let it hit the adjoining wood quite a bit louder than she should have.

Immediately, Alecto heard the pound of feet start back in their direction. Her heart constricting in a painful way that reminded her of the time when she was six where her father had grabbed her by the neck in one of his rages and nearly choked the life out of her, Alecto prepared herself. Grabbing her dead mother's wand from her frock pocket, she pointed it toward the open doorway.

Her father strode in with a terrible smirk twisting his already ugly features. For a moment, Alecto thought he might not be a wizard at all, but a demon. "What you got there, Alecto-dearie?" he asked in a condescending tone.

Jutting out her round chin, she yelled, "Leave right now or I'll curse you! Curse you with something _awful_!"

"Will you now?" He chortled in malice. "Well, let's see it then, Alecto!" her father roared before charging at her.

Heart pumping at the rapid-fire pace she knows rat's hearts to take when you lob off their tails, Alecto screamed, "Crucio! _Crucio_!" Nothing came from the wand at all. Her father reached her, the tip of her dead mother's wand digging into his shoulder.

"Aw, didn't work, did it?" he tutted.

Eyes big and terribly scared, Alecto could not say anything as she raised her tremulous blue eyes to meet her father's glacial ones. "C-C-C-" she stammered, begging the wand beyond all hope to _do _what she wanted.

That, of course, did not work and only seemed to set her father off further.

"Stupid little squib bitch!" he howled. Eyes no more than a prick of blue amongst the red of his face, neck, and hair, he backhanded her.

Tumbling to the ground, Alecto lost hold of the wand. The terrible fear that he might _break _it gripping her, she pushed herself up with her hands instead of pretending she'd been knocked out cold as she usually would.

Her father not expecting Alecto to rise so fast, she was able to wrap her fingers around the criss-cross grooves of the wand's handle as her father's foot connected with her gut. "Ergh!" she gasped as she lost her breakfast all over her father's shoes.

"Bloody Merlin!" he snarled, shaking his foot to rid it of the vomit.

Curling around her dead mother's wand, Alecto didn't expect what came next. Suddenly, her father was yanking Alecto to her feet by her ponytail. Incapable of stopping herself, she screamed as she though she might lose her scalp.

"Stop hurting her!" her brother cried as he came clattering out of the cupboard to tackle their father.

"Oh for fuck's sake!" their father shouted as he swatted away his son, causing Amycus to go careening across the room thanks to his small size and her father's brutish strength.

He might have gone to lay even more into her brother if Alecto hadn't gotten his attention for a second time by shrieking the _one _spell she wanted to work most for a third time. "_Crucio_!" she shrieked, but it didn't work, which meant that whole "third time's the charm" saying was a bunch of rot. Now her father was even _less _pleased by her interruption than he was by her failed attempt to muster even a spark from a dead woman's wand.

"Bitch!" he growled, turning to her. Hitting her again and again, her father did not stop until she crumpled to the ground and could do no more than scream for him to. _"Stop Father! Stop!"_

He didn't, but she knew wouldn't. He never did, not until she was bleeding enough for it to start staining the floor.

Eventually, his fist connected with her nose and her blood began to drip. Covering her nose briefly, she tried to stem it as his hands continued to rain down on her shoulders and head. Eventually, she held out her bloody hand in defense and yelled, "I'm sorry! I'm _sorry!"_

Eyeing the red marring her pallid hand, her father spat on her and declared, "Damn well better be!"

Grabbing at her then, he lifted her to her feet and snatched the wand she'd been protecting right out her hand. Eyes so very cruel, he smiled at her and brought his dead wife's wand to his knee, snapping it in two.

Hands limp at her side, Alecto said nothing and made no noise when her father laughed at her. "Stupid squib," he said, "you don't need a damn wand!"

Leaving the room then, Alecto's only comfort came when Amycus made his way over to her and touched her shoulder.

"I'm sorry he broke your wand," her brother whispered.

Taking in the sympathy that glowed in her brother's tiny eyes, Alecto felt the need to avert her stare. "Don't be, it wasn't mine anyway," she replied.

His eyebrows went to his hairline and Alecto could have rolled her eyes at him for how _stupid _he was. But, really, he wasn't any more idiotic than her. _S__he'd _let their father know the wand was important to her.

"Who's–" he started.

"Our mother's," she said before he could even finish his question.

His gaze fell. "Oh," Amycus muttered with little else to say.

Alecto wanted to be angry with her brother, she wanted to be able to yell at him for having no more to say about the one person who loved them most in the world, but she couldn't be. It wasn't like Amycus remembered her. He was only a few days old when their mother succumbed to some after-birth malady. Alecto, though, had almost been four and with a pitbull like hold, clung to what little she remembered about the woman. How she smelled a bit like wilting lilacs. The way her mouth curved in a frown when Alecto's father came home. How _every _night her mother tucked her in to bed and said, "I love you; I don't care if you don't end up being a witch, I don't care if you don't end up being bright or beautiful, I love you because you are _my _daughter."

Alecto knew she'd been loved by her mother and she would remember it to the end of her days.

Scrubbing at her nose, Alecto turned to her brother and said, "Come along, Amycus, it's high time we get started on our studies."

"Yes, sister," he agreed taking her hand with his own.

Together, sister and brother headed for the very library where Alecto had read about that curse–_C__rucio. _Perhaps Alecto would have to read up on it again and see why she hadn't been able to do it, because she _refused _to believe she was the squib her father always accused her of being.

* * *

A year later, when her Hogwarts school letter came, Alecto took it to her father. He read it once and apologized for the first time and only time in his life to her, "My apologies, I judged your capabilities too quickly, Alecto-dearie."

Lip stiff and eyes just as icy, she accepted what was offered, "It is forgiven."

Musingly, he'd turned to the window, "I guess we will have to get you a wand."

And together, a weekend later, they visited Moribund's who had her test eight wands before she came upon her last. A nine inch poplar wand with a core of dragon heartstring. Her father had almost been proud at this.

"My wand's also a nine inch poplar, but with troll whisker," he told her.

Alecto attempted to show some joy at this, because it was very obvious to her that Father was quite pleased they were so similar, but Alecto couldn't help but remember her mother's beautiful Ivy wand. It seemed she had no hope of being one bit like it was time she forgot her mother. Maybe it was time Alecto started stepping up to the plate and make her father _really _proud. She could do that, certainly?

So, with a very slight smile, she remarked, "Isn't that good? Surely someday I'll be as fine a witch as you are a wizard."

"Let's not get ahead of yourself, _dearie,_" he scolded with a light tone, but his fingers dug sharp into the bruises on her shoulder.

Deflating, Alecto knew she'd never be anything but a stupid bitch to her father. "Yes, Father," she replied.

Leaving the shop, she thought of the wand in the box tucked against her side and wondered how long she had until she was cruel as her father. With a wand like his, it undoubtedly wouldn't be too long. Maybe there could be hope for Amycus?

No, he too was already lost. He _enjoyed _capturing the rats living in their home and, recently, took to vivisecting them on the kitchen table. He thought it was _fun, _just like Alecto thought it was fun to imagine using all the little hexes she read in her family's books on those dumb muggles her father was always raving about.

Already, they were both too much like their father and not enough like their mother.

(Someday, someone would say they'd become _too much _like their father).

Alecto wasn't sure if she should cry for her fate or rage toward it, but no matter how she looked at it, she knew she wasn't going to escape it. She just didn't have the cleverness to do it. So, really, her best course of action was to take what was going to be hers anyways and be the _best _at it. Alecto would be more than cruel, she would be downright _sadistic. _

That wasn't a dream–like her hope to become a woman like her mother–it was a _promise, _the same as the glint in her her father's squinty blue eyes before he walloped her one with a fist to the face.

* * *

**I can't say I'm overly happy with this fic. I did want to explore what could make a character so cruel, though, and this seemed as plausible a reason as any.**

**Thanks for reading and please review.**


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